Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a subject information acquisition apparatus that acquires information on the inside of a subject.
Description of the Related Art
Studies on a photoacoustic imaging technique of acquiring internal information on a living body using light beams in a non-invasive manner has progressed. When a subject is irradiated with measurement light beams such as pulsed laser beams, the measurement light beams are absorbed by biological tissues inside the subject, and acoustic waves are generated when the biological tissues expand. By receiving and analyzing the generated acoustic waves (also referred to as photoacoustic waves, which are typically ultrasound waves), it is possible to visualize information associated with optical characteristics of the inside of the subject. Such a technique is called photoacoustic tomography (PAT).
In many measurement apparatuses (hereinafter referred to as photoacoustic measurement apparatuses) which use photoacoustic tomography, a configuration in which a probe that receives acoustic waves scans a subject in order to receive acoustic waves from a wide range of areas is employed.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2011-125571 discloses a photoacoustic measurement apparatus of such a type that a subject is sandwiched by two holding members and a probe scans over the surface of the holding member. Moreover, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2012-231980 discloses a photoacoustic measurement apparatus of such a type that an operator manually scans the surface of a subject using a portable photoacoustic probe.